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Comment by Mawr | Hacker News Reader

I'd say it's at least two. Driving a car is fairly straightforward, the problems are all tractable.

Can't imagine where I'd even start with automating the work of an electrician. Even something as basic as robots grabbing regular objects is intractable right now, much less handling wire.

You'd have to have a project of massive scale that's designed specifically to aid automation and then have a fairly straightforward robot doing the work.

"Send a robot to arbitrary location X and do arbitrary electrician job Z" is fantasy land.

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>> have a project of massive scale

If datacenter demand doesn't evaporate, mega scale datacenters sound like the most probable candidates for this.

the datacenter demand wouldn't evaporate, it will probably change instead - i expect that the datacenters will soon be built like pre-fab homes or like the Liberty ships - the fastest ship was built in less than 5 days.

In such a module-based construction you can optimize layout and the fabrication sequence so that the labor is minimized and simplified - like for example you'd be simply laying down wire instead of running it.

Thus the modules can be fabricated where the labor is cheap and plentiful and with high degree of robots usage while only final assembly would require high cost labor at the target location.

Isn’t the whole SpaceX fantasy to just launch data centers into space?

They are going to have the necessary launch capability. The rest are bound to the surface.

Anyway, that demonstrates another way of datacenters getting modularized. The point is that the actual volume of datacenters to be produced calls for the mass production assembly line style. The one-off custom built approach becomes unsustainable.

there are many levels of automation. electricians already use a lot of "automation" already: wire pullers, electric drivers, test equipment, soldering and crimping tools, conduit benders, pipe threaders, and so on.

installation systems are currently made for humans, so one has to do some fantasizing to see a future where installs can be done completely by non-human agents or by automated orchestration of low skill human agents.

While a lot of my tools are faster I would never call them automated. You stil have to put the wire in the crimp, you still have to measure the pipe and make the cut, you still need to put the head of the driver in the screw. The 'hard' part is still 100% on the human.

The only way to really automate electrical installation is at the source (ha), when the construction materials are manufactured. I can imagine some god awful system of snap-together conduit prefilled with conductor, and junction boxes with monster dip switches to replace manual connections. It will cost 10x the price of standard materials, and it will be horribly wastful, but the labour costs will be negligible if it can be done by a robot or unskilled labourer.

Given enough motivation (cash) and temporary tools (WD-40 and tape) there is nothing stopping bigtech from doing just that to kill local trade and then 10x prices

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